Fans Need To Stop Overanalyzing Bosh's Tweets

Well, at least one person in the media is sticking up for Bosh.

Courtesy of Tim Chisholm:

So yes, Bosh, being the social-media savvy guy that he is (remember those interests that don't always begin and end with sports?), tweets his followers with innocuous questions about what they think his future should look like.

He's never been a free agent before, never known what it is like to play in another NBA city, and he's justifiably curious about what that process may yield. He's even curious to know how people he's never met feel about the subject. He isn't turning his back on Toronto or spitting upon the Raptors, he's simply entering into a whole new life experience and he's curious to explore all that that experience has to offer.

He's not preemptively divorcing Toronto, he's simply asking himself, for the first time that he's been allowed to, what else is out there. Keep in mind that this is a guy that made it a half-season longer than Vince Carter did in Toronto before he got that curiousity itch, and unlike Carter (or Damon Stoudamire before him) he never quit on his team or demanded a trade out of town as a way of bracing himself to scratch that itch.

Bosh has never spoken or acted like he has left Toronto in his rear-view mirror, and in fact he's always gone on the record stating that he loves the city and it would be hard for him to leave if that's the way the chips fall, yet people have begun willfully misinterpreting his curiousity as wanton infidelity. They've begun accusing him of cheating when all he's done is watch another pretty young thing walk by

He innocently indulges his curiousity over Twitter, a venue where people discuss bowel movements and political discourse with the same fervor, and it becomes national news on Canadian sports pages. Seriously?

I have to say, one of the things I really, really hate about today's internet society is overanalyzing minutia as if it means far more than it does. It's the same thing with verbal quotes the the media. How many times have you said something you don't exactly mean, or that can be easily misconstrued to mean something else? I am generally pretty careful with my words, but it happens to me a fair bit. Even to the media, I've been interviewed on occasion and realized afterwards that I had something I didn't exactly mean. And I'm not talking to the media nearly as much as NBA players do, so I'm not nearly as comfortable with them as I am.

Imagine if our words were as analyzed as Bosh's short little message? We have no idea what Bosh's mood was, his state of mind, or even his sobriety level, yet people are taking one single question and trying to see far more into it than anyone should.

Personally, I've got far better things to do than analyze one question a 25 year old college drop-out with a lot of time on his hands asked.

I hope Chisolm is aware that over-analyzing the over-analyzing of Bosh's tweets is just as bad the original offense.

The problem isn't with Bosh's tweets, its twitter. Twitter has knocked down the wall that previously insulated player's from fans. Instead of having managers, agents and publicists carefully carve out a players image, player's can immediately connect with their fans minus the watering down of the standard brand conscious cliches that are so prevalant in pre/post game interviews.

Player's like Bosh are either ignorant to the widespread effect 140 characters can have towards misinterpreting a person's intentions or revel in the hype it can create in the round the clock media hyperbole circus that dominates sports media.

Personally I never really connected with Bosh. I respect his game, his ability and his work ethic, but i've never had that emotional connection that existed with Wince.

If he stays great, if he leaves that's okay too. I'm never going to be too torn up about it unless he tweets something like

''I coulda totally played hurt and taken my team to the playoffs, my agent said it wasn't worth it, my bad."

Sadly the hate spiral has already begun and I don't think it can be stopped. If Bosh leaves he will be booed and it will be merciless. Everything from his post all star break play to the injury, to the tweets and now the laker game is all working against him here and it's going to get much worse before it gets better.

I do wonder what is unique about Toronto fans that they are so quick to turn on thier star, while other fans like the Cavs or Heat would never turn on Bron or Wade until they actually went to the darkside. We seem to preemptively back thier bags and force thier hand. Only once we chase them out of town do we angrily wonder why they never wanted to stay.

Oh no! Another analytical piece on Bosh's tweets. Me thinks this just helps spike the frothy responses on the issue. Having had my say on the subject (on a couple of occasions at least), in the absence of any new twitter brain farts by the renaissance-media man, this is now becoming quite boring.

I can't stand Twitter, anyway. My life is full enough that I don't need to know what others are thinking or doing at all times of the day. I can't see anyone having a boring enough life that they need to know personal details of someone's life, let alone someone they don't even know.

I'd write more, but I've got to finish cleaning the pool so the kids can cool off, then I'm going to trim the lawn and then do some planting.